House of Eden
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl AU. Oneshot. Some Mandrea suggestion. They said the house was a house of ill-repute, though Daryl had no idea what that was. Merle said it was Eden. It held more than Daryl ever expected of it.


**AN: So this one wasn't really born of any prompt. I wrote this simply because it has been something I considered writing for a while now. I just thought it was time to go ahead and get it out there.**

 **Warnings for some light smut and for adult themes.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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The dryness and the heat made the dust kick up easily from the road in clouds of red that seemed fully capable of choking the life out of Daryl as he walked just three steps behind his older brother. He'd probably followed Merle for ten or fifteen miles, but the sun made it feel like they'd crossed half of one of those biggest type desserts where men started to see things that weren't really there. Daryl was waiting, almost, for the moment when he might see something spring up in front of him that he was actually capable of walking right through. Maybe it would be a great waterfall or something. He'd never actually laid eyes on a waterfall—at least not one more impressive than the one about a foot high where Black Creek spilled over into Farmer's Mill Creek.

No great waterfalls appeared, though. Before Daryl could set his mind on waiting for one, he caught site of the profile of some of the buildings that sat just at the edge of town, the vision of them blurred slightly by the red dust that seemed to be kicked up by even the slightest breeze.

As Daryl walked, he was starkly aware of the jingle-jangle of his brother's pants as he swung his legs in front of him. He was walking along, smiling like a jackass at nothing and nobody that lived outside his head. Every now and again he said something that Daryl couldn't hear—or didn't care to hear—that simply drifted off into the dry air and got lost. Daryl's own pants likely jingled, but he couldn't hear them. He could only hear the click clacking of coins in his brother's pocket. His own pocket, though, felt heavy. It was weighed down with a week's worth of pay, mostly in coins but also with a couple pieces of folding money mixed in.

He'd never been with his brother on his day-off excursions before. His brother would regularly have him spend a week's pay in far less time than it took to earn it. Daryl was a little more frugal. But his brother, Merle, was going to some place he'd never been before and was dragging Daryl along this time. It was to make a man out of him, so Merle said, and Daryl was going for the hell of it.

 _A house of ill-repute._

Daryl had heard it called that. He didn't much know what it meant though. Ill he knew. Ill he understood. Ill like a wet hen. Ill as a snake. There was also ill to say that you'd gone and got yourself sick. There was ill like went with tempered when someone had suddenly taken bad something that had been said or done.

But Daryl had no damn idea what a repute was and he had no real way of finding it out. Merle didn't know what it was either and Daryl wasn't likely going to ask another soul if Merle didn't know.

Besides, it didn't matter. Merle told him this place? This house of ill-repute? It didn't fit any of Daryl's definitions of ill because only great things happened there and nobody was even sick. Those women? They went to the doctors in town. They were healthier, more than likely, than any of the women even around them.

Merle called it, instead of a house of ill-repute, a house of dreams. It was damn near Eden built out of boards to hear Merle talk. And women? They'd be real nice to you. Just as nice as you wanted them to be, and all you had to do? Was pat a pocket. They'd especially be interested, Merle said, in pockets that weighed down one's pants like Daryl's pocket was doing at the moment.

And Daryl might spring two dollars for a real soft woman to be real nice to him. At least, he might just this one time. The only woman he was really around, besides the old woman what lived in the farm house where Merle and Daryl kept a small room in the attic, was Loretta DuCann.

Loretta was neither soft, nor was she very nice. She'd made it clear to Daryl, and everyone else who was listening, that she wasn't interested in no roll-and-poke with nobody that weren't her lawfully wedded husband.

Daryl might have an itch to marry one day. He might want a wife and a house and land all his own—where he'd hire cowhands to live in his attic—but the last thing he was aiming to do was wed Loretta DuCann. No way, no how.

Daryl thought all these things as he walked along, three steps behind Merle, in the dry heat and choking dust of the early afternoon. He didn't say any of them out loud, though, because Merle might've called him foolish. Merle might've said he talked too damn much if he talked as much as he though—and the job of talking too much was one that belonged singularly to Merle.

Daryl's thoughts carried him all the way to the wooden porch steps of the house—Eden as Merle had called it—and right up them to the front door. As soon as they got there, the heavy red door swung open as though the woman standing in it had anticipated their arrival.

She was tall, blonde, and looked clean. She looked fresh out the bath clean. She was light skinned—no sun burn to be found and no peeling on her nose as was common for Loretta—and her blonde hair was fluffy and soft looking. She was painted up something dramatic, but Daryl was already a good bit more interested in this here Eden than he had been.

She was wearing a silky, brightly colored robe—not really what Daryl was used to seeing on a woman in the middle of the day—and she smiled at both of them as she leaned against the door froom.

"You boys don't look like officials," she commented.

Daryl didn't understand the reference, but Merle apparently did. He chuckled.

"Heard tell the sheriff don't exactly miss this place," Merle said.

The woman looked amused, some joke shared between them that Daryl didn't know if he even cared to understand, and she stepped aside and gestured them into the house. It was big. It was bigger than the farm house where Daryl and Merle stayed now. It was bigger than any one they'd stayed in before. But it was well-cared for too. This woman must be handy, or else she had someone who was.

As soon as they were into the house, she closed the heavy red door behind them and Daryl was immediately aware of how much dirt they were tracking into the house. If she noticed it, though, she didn't say anything. She immediately slipped out of the robe that she was wearing, hung it on a hook beside the door, and stood there—half revealed to them—in the nicest looking pair of women's underbritches that Daryl had ever seen.

Merle smirked at her.

"We're lookin' for a couple of women," Merle said. "Never been here, but I know how it works. He don't."

The blonde glanced at Daryl and smiled. Somehow, he'd won her approval. She walked toward him, put her hand on his face, and trailed her thumb across his skin. He shivered at the touch, involuntarily, and then she looked even more pleased. She moved her fingers and scratched them lightly under his chin.

"Are you old enough to be in here?" She asked, raising her eyebrows at him. He wondered how old she was. She didn't look that old to him, but he knew that she was what Merle called a Madame, even if he didn't know the age a woman had to hit to go from being a Ma'am to a Madame. "You don't look hardly old enough to shave. You sure you've got more than peach fuzz?"

She was joshing him now. He could tell. But he couldn't respond because his mouth was dry from the dust outside and from the very fact that this blonde—who smelled like honeysuckle perfume and peppermint—was stirring up something that he hadn't expected to have woken up quite so early. He was trying to will it to behave until it was time.

"He's been off the teat goin' on at least twenty years," Merle said. "But ain't never got back on one—you catch my drift."

The woman looked amused again.

"I'm Miss Andrea," she said, self-identifying as a Miss and not a Madame, her commented directed as much to Merle as to Daryl. "We have rules here. Nothing rowdy unless you ask for it ahead of time. You pay for what you get and you ask for what you want. Anybody gets out of line? I'll have you out of here so fast you'll hardly bring your dick with you. We got all kinds of girls here that do all kinds of things, but not all of them do everything. You order what you want up front."

Daryl was intimidated just by that.

"What do you do, sugar?" Merle asked, practically licking his lips in anticipation.

Miss Andrea looked at him.

"I do what you pay for," Miss Andrea responded. "It's more expensive. The more...experience? The more...skill the girl has? The higher her cost. What you want, too, changes your price."

She looked back at Daryl.

"But for you? I like them first time out," Miss Andrea said. "I can be real nice when I want to be. Easy. A dollar special for the first time out."

Daryl could barely swallow. If he wasn't intimidated before, he was intimidated now. He didn't have anything against the blonde, not really, but he was suddenly sure that he didn't want to spend his dollar with her. She was put together just fine—every part seemed right where it ought to be—but Daryl wasn't sure that he was up to snuff for a woman like her. And, luckily for him, Merle already had a taste in his mouth.

"I got money," Merle barked, catching her attention and letting it be known that he didn't like being ignored. When she looked at him, Merle's face broke into a smile. "And I was—hoping easy wasn't gonna be what you was interested in."

She smiled at Merle again, nodded her head, and then turned back to Daryl.

"What do you want?" She asked him. "If you—could pick what you wanted? What would you want? What kinda girl fits your dreams for the big day?"

Daryl almost choked trying to swallow, but he got it down. He glanced at Merle and got a nod with a warning look. He shouldn't fuck this up for them by getting his words hung in his throat. The Miss-Madame might not care for a stuttering cowhand.

"Soft," Daryl said.

"Soft?" She echoed. Daryl nodded.

"Pretty and soft," Daryl said.

She nodded gently at him.

"And nice," Daryl added quickly, remembering his own requirements that he'd thought about as he'd walked along from the farmhouse to here. "Real nice like to me."

Miss Andrea laughed quietly.

"All my girls are nice," she said. "Real nice. But—I think I've got just the one. Come with me. I'll show you to a room. Get comfortable, but don't touch the sheets with your clothes on. That's a rule too."

Daryl followed her, watching her ass sway as he went. He assumed—because she hadn't said it was a rule—that the watching was free.

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Daryl had taken the suspenders off that were holding up his pants—weighed down by all the coins that he'd soon be lightened of—and he'd peeled off his shirt. While he was waiting, he'd also taken out his shoes, looked around for a moment and finally opened the window just a crack to pour the dirt out of them and into the street from which it came instead of covering the floors with it, and he'd peeled off the socks that he was wearing. His pants? He left those on. He didn't know how comfortable he was supposed to be, after all.

Merle frequented these places. From what he'd heard tell? His father had too. It was only by some streak of luck—good or bad was up to the person considering it—that he and Merle had been planted in his mother and not in the belly of some whore. That's what Merle always said—for as much as they knew? There might be two dozen more Dixons running around with no idea who they were.

When the door to his room finally opened, a woman with a veritable mop of curly red hair—a pile of it that would've rivaled that of Miss Andrea—came in carrying a pitcher and bowl. Daryl rushed ahead to catch the door for her and keep it from falling shut on her, but it closed so quickly that there was no need for the rush and he really just ended up embarrassing himself slightly with his clumsy stumbling forward.

The redhead didn't seem to notice at first. She put the bowl on the table, poured the water from the pitcher into it, and came up from a drawer in the dresser with a towel, rag, and a cake of soap. Then she turned and looked at him, sincerely, for the first time.

She was pretty and she was soft. Her eyes were nice and she carried her shoulders rolled slightly forward, different than Miss Andrea, in a way that made her less intimidating. She didn't look, either, as comfortable in the black strap-and-lace get up that she was wearing. But, even if she didn't look as comfortable, she looked every bit as well put together.

She offered him a soft smile.

"You're handsome," she drawled, her accent a little thicker than Miss Andrea's—even if Daryl knew he had no room to criticize someone's accent. His own was one reason he seldom let anyone know what he was thinking. He blushed slightly at the compliment.

"You're pretty," he said. "I wanted that. Soft and pretty," Daryl said. Suddenly he didn't know if he should tell her she was what he'd wanted, but he couldn't take it back now. "And nice," he added.

She smiled.

"I'm Carol," she said. "And I'm very nice. As nice as you can ever want."

Daryl felt comforted by that.

"Daryl," he said.

Carol nodded at him.

"You can bathe yourself, or I can do it for you," Carol said. "As you like."

Daryl looked at the bowl of water and the washrag and soap in the woman's hands. She offered it to him and he took it.

"I don't think I ordered a bath," he said.

Carol smiled.

"Everybody gets one," she said. "It's just one of the little perks we offer. You—uh—you got whatever you want. Double the time."

Daryl furrowed his brow at her and she laughed quietly.

"First time special," she added.

Daryl blushed red.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Carol shook her head.

"Don't be," she said. "I—like it. I already like you. There's no sorry here. Nothing to be sorry for. And I know how to keep a confidence if there's any to be kept."

By the time that Daryl got out of his pants and started to wash, he'd had to apologize—even though Carol had insisted there was no need in it—at least twice more. He was obviously very excited by what was to come and he was embarrassed by the fact that he thought he was a little too excited. Maybe it was a little too early. Maybe she'd be offended that he was thinking about her already—that he was looking at the pout of her lips and the curves of her body.

But she said she was flattered. And she sat on the edge of the bed, picking at the black stockings she wore, and watching him while he bathed.

When he finished, turning himself around for bath-inspection as though she'd pull his ears and check behind them the way he remembered his mama doing it when he was a kid, she stood up and came over. Her hands touched his shoulders—soft and cool—and her lips touched his. They were equally soft. He felt thirsty, but this time it wasn't quite the thirst for water that it had been earlier.

"Do you want to take this off me?" She asked. "Or—did you want me to take it off?"

Daryl couldn't speak at the moment and shook his head. It meant nothing, really, but he was glad that she seemed to understand what he was trying to say. He didn't want to try to find his way around all the hooks and straps and everything else. It was nice enough wrapping, but it wasn't the wrapping that interested him. She took herself out of it.

Daryl had seen a woman or two naked—mostly on accident—but never one that looked like her.

"You can touch me," she said softly and with a good deal of reassurance. "As much as you want. How you want. I won't mind it."

With the extra push, Daryl did touch her, though he hesitated before he reached a hand toward her breast and rubbed his thumb over her nipple. When it responded to him, though, in its own way, he did the same to the other side. Some response, after all, must indicate interest—waking them up seemed much like what happened to him, though on a smaller level. He didn't need much waking up right now.

He moved and nuzzled at her face and she turned and caught his lips again, this time turning the soft kiss from before into something that nearly took his breath away. Her tongue and her teeth did things to him that he'd never felt before as she nipped at his lips and licked them soothed from the sting. By the time that she moved her hand down to stroke him? Daryl did the unthinkable. He did the unimaginable. He did the most embarrassing thing that ever a man had done in a house of ill-repute.

And his face burned fire hot for it, his burning embarrassment taking over even his pleasure at her touch.

He used to cry a lot as a kid. He knew it, not because he remembered it, but because Merle jerked him around about it. Merle said he was a cry baby. He forgave him only his tears on the day their Mama had died. Those were the only tears that Daryl remembered—and maybe he only remembered them because he recalled it as the only time he'd ever seen his brother cry. It had been the only time that it was alright for a man to cry, as Daryl had learned it.

Right now, though? Daryl wanted to cry, even if he bit it back.

Carol looked unmoved, though. She maybe even looked pleased. Without saying anything or indicating that Daryl should be ashamed, she returned to the bowl and washed herself up where he'd dirtied her with his inability to control himself. Then she brought the rag over and gently washed him—like she didn't even see any reason for embarrassment. Like it didn't even seem out of the ordinary.

"Get into bed?" She asked. "It's nicer there."

Daryl did get into the bed, still getting over his mortification, and Carol followed him. The bed there was ten times as soft as any he'd ever slept in before. In comparison, his little cot in the farmhouse attic felt like a slab. He might've paid a dollar just to sleep in the bed.

But this was better, because Carol came right on in after him and she sided up to him, rubbing his chest and kissing his jaw as she did.

He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to ask her how she got to living in a house of ill-repute. He wanted to ask her if, since she lived there, she might know what the hell a repute was since nobody else seemed to know besides the man that had said the phrase when Daryl had heard it. He wanted to ask her how she knew Miss Andrea and if Carol was a Ma'am or a Madame or a Miss since he wasn't quite sure how such titles might be determined.

But he thought too much, and if he said out loud everything he thought about? He'd talk too much. And this wasn't for talking. That's what Merle would tell him. The things that happened here? They were wonderful, but they weren't talking. Here? You didn't have to talk at all.

And it seemed to be true enough.

Before Daryl knew it, Carol had stroked him to the point that he'd stopped thinking almost as suddenly as he seemed to start a new idea.

And he was waking up again.

"How'd you get here?" Daryl asked.

Carol frowned at him and quickly replaced it with a smile.

"Livin' here?" Daryl clarified, determined to at least know something about this woman if he was doing with her what he knew he was supposed to do with a lawfully wedded wife.

She smiled, but this time it looked more genuine.

"Miss Andrea saved my life," Carol said. "It's the best place I could hope to live now."

Daryl didn't really understand, but he realized that maybe that was her point. She'd answered him, like a nice girl would, but she wasn't interested in talking about much more.

To prove she wasn't interested in too much conversation? She straddled him. Sitting perched above him, her wet heat driving him to wake up even more, she rubbed his chest and lowered herself to him so that they fell into the kissing they'd been doing before—the kissing that sent a throbbing sensation through Daryl.

And then she lifted herself and guided him into her. She wrapped around him, all at once, and she smiled at him when he was overtaken with the sensation to the point that he couldn't think for a moment. She moved her body, and his moved with her without him even planning to do it, to create a feeling of friction that was so good it made the back of Daryl's throat ache with damn near the desire to cry about how much he liked it.

She stopped as suddenly as she started the action, though, and pulled her body free of his. He caught her hips, confused by what she was doing. He stammered out his protest and she quickly reassured him.

"I'm just changing positions," she said. "You'll be in charge."

She flipped onto her back, dramatically opening herself to him as though to prove to him that she wasn't really going anywhere.

He hung over her now and shook his head gently.

"I don't think I know what to do," Daryl said. "At least—not doin' it right."

She laughed quietly at him.

"You can't do it wrong," she said. "As long as you find the spot? Get it in? Do what feels good to you. That's all the right there is."

Daryl's knowledge of how this worked said she was right. He didn't know much about sex beyond the crude stories told in loud voices and with barking laughter of the men that he'd been around in his life, but he got the idea that it was, essentially, an in and out process—and that was his job. The in and the out.

The third time that he mastered the out, though, and failed to be very good at the in? Carol caught his hips and shook her head at him.

"You don't have to come all the way out," she said, wrapping her legs around him as though to limit his movement a little. "Just—go as far as feels good to you. It'll feel real good to me. Promise."

Daryl tried to follow her instruction. There was, he thought, a great deal to pay attention to—assuming he was supposed to pay attention to everything—but she didn't seem at all bothered. She rubbed one of her hands between them, her eyelids fluttering a little, and she scratched at his back and side with the other hand.

Soon he forgot to pay attention to anything more than his own feelings and the fluttering of her eyelids—sometimes wide open and staring at him, sometimes harder to see as she moved with him. When she opened her mouth at him, like she was shocked or scared and might scream, but no sound came out? She did something to him that made him reach his own ending with more enthusiasm than he had before when he'd made a mess of her.

This time, he was sure the mess was there, but it wasn't running down her.

She lie there, under him, for a moment. She pulled him down to her and kissed him again as he moved his hips—involuntarily still—milking out the last bit of pleasure before he slipped from her. She rubbed his face, rubbed her fingers in the edge of his hair.

She smiled at him, softly, and treated him as nicely as he thought that he'd expect any wife he might have to treat him—as wives would, he was sure.

But then it was over. Too quickly for him. He considered offering her a dollar more for a second time special, but he never got around to it. That might not be how this worked. Daryl didn't know how it worked, after all, and Miss Andrea had said that he had to order stuff up front—and he'd just ordered the one time, never realizing how bad he'd want another time or two.

Carol rolled out of the bed and went to the bowl, washing herself up before she offered him the rag again. He took it, reluctant to even leave the bed. He was suddenly overtaken with a sadness that he couldn't explain. He was suddenly as choked by the feeling that had come over him as he ever had been by the dry dust of the street outside.

She pulled herself back into what she'd been wearing, stretching and clipping and adjusting as she went, and she offered Daryl a soft smile every now and again as he put his own clothes back on.

He thanked her softly, not sure if he should or not, and she nodded at him and continued to give him the soft smiles.

"You don't have to be sad, ya know?" She said to him, finally. He felt struck that it seemed she'd read his mind—she'd done that more than once. She shook her head slightly. "Don't be sad. Hold onto what you felt before. It's what I do."

Daryl was starting to believe this house really was Eden. But if it was? He was surely being cast out. He'd have given a week's pay. Two or three even. He'd have gone without most anything he'd considered a pleasure before, just to stay there, in that soft bed, with Carol—pretty, soft, and nice to him.

But there was nothing to do but accept his fate and go. At least—and he was holding onto this—he could come back. With or without Merle, though convincing his brother to return wouldn't be difficult, he could come back.

And she'd still be here. Looking as much like an angel as she did at the minute—though Daryl had never seen an honest to God angel, he couldn't imagine they'd be too much different than her—and she'd be waiting for him. Just for him.

Money he could get. And money could get him her. Enough might even make her wed him if he wanted. Money, he'd heard tell, couldn't buy happiness. But if it could buy Carol? It was close enough by Daryl's figuring.

When he left the room, he found Merle chatting up Miss Andrea. She looked clean and just as well put together as she had when they'd got there. The only way that Daryl even knew that anything had happened outside his room was that Merle was clean too—one of those free baths doing him more good than harm for sure—and Merle was rarely ever clean.

At the door, they paid their tabs, Carol and Miss Andrea standing by, and Daryl—usually tight with his income because someone had to be—barely even noticed the money that was changing hands. He just watched as Miss Andrea passed Carol her share and Carol smiled at the coins.

And both women offered final kisses—sealing the deal that had been done—to Merle and Daryl before Carol walked off into the house somewhere where the other girls were hidden for the moment and Miss Andrea slipped back into her robe and opened the heavy red door.

"Come on back, whenever you please," Miss Andrea said to them, but Daryl barely heard her as he followed Merle down the steps and into the dry, hot, dusty street again. The walk home, with as heavy as his feet were feeling—reluctant to leave the house—was going to be twice as long as the walk there.

Merle seemed on top of the world, though.

"Sweet lil' piece you got'cha, boy," Merle crowed. "Good for ya?"

Daryl hummed, insincerely.

"Comin' back to Eden, boy?" Merle asked.

Daryl hummed again.

"See? Ain't no house of ill-repute," Merle called out. "Ain't not a damn thing ill about it."

Daryl swallowed, thinking about the heaviness in his chest and stomach at the moment, and he thought, maybe, he knew now what a repute might be. A lot of good happened in that house—so much more than he'd imagined—but the ill? The repute, maybe? Came at the exact moment that you were cast out of Eden.

And you had to leave an angel behind.


End file.
